Writing, secrets and loads of chocolate cake!

I mentioned in a previous post that promotion is my kryptonite (to be specific I know what I have to do, but I don’t feel comfortable doing it). I want to discuss that in a little more detail, and I want to discuss something about my book that relates to it. Maybe what I have to say will help others out there that have a similar problem feel as though they’re not as alone as they might imagine they are.

Having dyslexia taught me to be quiet in case I said or wrote something that made sense to me but didn’t make sense to other people. The fear I had of tripping over my words held me back from publishing my novel because of the worry that it wouldn’t make sense. Reassurances by people that have read it, and having it professionally edited, didn’t make that fear disappear but it did make me determined to push it aside. Now I face the same fear, only its when I’m writing on my blog, or replying to someone on Shelfari (or Facebook, or Twitter). It is easier to not say anything at all, but it makes promoting a book difficult.

I’ve always imagined what it’s like to feel free to say what you like on social networking websites and not have to think about it so much. I imagine it, because I don’t experience it. Each tweet or comment I carefully pick my words to make sure I’ve not added in words that shouldn’t be there, or missed out words that should. Sometimes I can look back at what I’ve written and I don’t recognise it. I can also look back at what I’ve written and not see the mistakes that are there. No doubt either before or soon after this post gets published, the person that runs my website will help me fix it if it needs fixing (my posts are still in my words, but may be tweaked slightly), but they can’t look through everything and they make mistakes too occasionally.

That leads me nicely onto something else I wish to discuss. Before my book was published it was edited several times by different people, but there were a few last minute rewrites that the professional editor I went to never got to see. Unfortunately, despite not being the only eyes on it, a few minor errors managed to sneak in and I published it without knowing that it was less than my best.

The readers that have personally been in touch with me so far have been absolute sweethearts, and one of them raised the errors to my attention. It took a while as I had to go line by line again, but, with a little help, I think they were all caught. There wasn’t many, but I was disappointed that anyone saw them. I’m sorry to all my readers. I hope you are still willing to give my book, and me, a chance.

I am waiting for a response from Amazon about how readers should get the updated version as there is conflicting information about it online. I will let you all know on my blog how to go about updating it as soon as I know myself. Anyone that downloaded their copy of Forgotten after 19th July 2012 should already have the fixed version.

Again, I can only apologise for this and I hope that the majority of you will understand that I would have never knowingly sent this out into the world with errors. I can’t help the mistakes I’ve made in the past, but I can do my best to fix them and try harder next time.

This post has taken a while for me to write, but I feel it was important I do it. I have a difficult time expressing my gratitude to you all as the words in my head do not seem right on the page, but I am ever grateful to those who Like me or my book, or follow what I have to say. I will continue to try and talk more as I know how important it is to have a close relationship with other authors and readers, but if I am ever quiet then I hope you can also understand why that may be.